Tag: SOCCER

  • Heimir’s hot air baloon

    Heimir’s hot air baloon

    Rep. Of Ireland… 1 Armenia… 2 There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which, as punishment for floating a hot air baloon sporting an image of Principal Skinner mooning, the long suffering headmaster made the miscrient, mischief making spikey head accompany him on a night engaging in his favourite passtime – astrology. Lo and behold,…

  • Nothing bubbling yet but the glass is half full

    Nothing bubbling yet but the glass is half full

    Rep. Of Ireland… 2 Hungary… 2 Analysis of anything needs context. For example, if you just saw the above scoreline without having seeing the match or any details thereof, you might consider it a poor result. Indeed, were it not for a heroic stop from Caoimhin Kelleher shortly before the break, whatever morsels of positivity…

  • Coleman and Keeley overlooked as latest Irish squad revealed

    Captain and spiritual leader Seamus Coleman and burgeoning young goalkeeper Josh Keeley are among the notable absentees from the Republic Of Ireland squad announced by manager Heimir Halgrimsson ahead of forthcoming World Cup Qualifiers against Hungary and Armenia. Icelandic gaffer Halgrimsson said “No, it’s always tough to leave Seamus out, no matter what, and there’s…

  • Rolling Down Memory Lane – The Audiobook

    Rolling Down Memory Lane – The Audiobook

    March 2020, by way of maintaining some degree of sanity during the lockdowns necessitated by the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic, I wrote and published my second book, Rolling Down Memory Lane though for a thousand reasons and yet, we never got it distributed to anywhere near the levels which would have been intended or…

  • Eze to forget about loyalty or is it common sense?

    Eze to forget about loyalty or is it common sense?

    No matter how many straws one attempts to clutch at, sometimes you’ll never find the one you’re looking for. Or the one you’re hoping might be there somewhere, buried in a stockpile. Go back to a piece on these pages within the last week, and you will find reference to the fact that Dermot McCabe…

  • The annual six week obsession

    The annual six week obsession

    The sporting calendar is, I suppose, identical to the ‘normal’ one, in that, it’s a matter of ticking off milestones on the annual schedule. Instead of Christmas think Cheltenham, for Easter see Fairyhouse, Listowel Writers Week = Listowel Harvest Racing Festival. Similarly, for me, the commencement of a new soccer season in Britain is also…

  • Meath men on the move

    Meath men on the move

    The wheel of the sporting year turns again as one segment closes off with the playing of the All Ireland SHC Final, and those in men’s and Ladies football and Camogie imminently awaited, while in other sports things haven’t even kicked off. Quite literally. In recent week’s we’ve seen the brightest star in Irish Basketball,…

  • Steady Eddie’s stock continues to rise

    Steady Eddie’s stock continues to rise

    If it quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck, you can be fairly sure it is a duck. Likewise, if managers such as Mikel Arteta and Ruben Amorim appear to be under pressure ahead of the new season, it’s because they are. Arteta more so of the two. For one thing, he’s in…

  • If you thought Septic football disappeared with Blatter… Think again.

    If you thought Septic football disappeared with Blatter… Think again.

    Do you ever cast your mind back to the world before Netflix? Before specialised channels on the Sky platform. Like the individual discipline channels. History, Arts, Golf, Movies, Racing, Cricket, Documentaries, True Crime. You name it. Now, I’m sure the non sporting genres listed previous always got their run out, it was just that they…

  • Silly season doesn’t do setaside!

    Silly season doesn’t do setaside!

    What must be close to if not over three decades ago, some ‘Genius’ (can you smell the sarcasm off that description?) in a carpeted office somewhere in Brussells came up with the bright spark of paying farmers not to grow crops on particular parcels of land. Officially the terminology was that the ground was to…